Hoa Dong La, an ex-RCMP officer, today was convicted in Red Deer, Alberta on 14 charges. The convictions included two charges of criminal harassment, two charges of extortion, and 10 charges of fraud over $5,000 relating to mortgage fraud.

Justice David Gates made the rulings, in an all-day decision in Red Deer.

Justice Gates went into great detail summarizing the evidence from the trial, which lasted much of February 2012. The Court was told how La was involved in multiple properties, managing tenants, and continually mixing his private affairs of being a landlord with his public duties of being a police officer.

Gates pointed out that La often attended to landlord duties while in uniform, did excessive “drive by’s” his properties, sometimes conducted surveillance while in uniform, and even pulled over people to which there was no public issue, but to which La was having private landlord types of issues with.

On one specific occasion La pressured having one couple to assume a mortgage, during a meeting during which La closed drapes, unhooked the phone lines, and even displayed a firearm.

Justice Gates summarized the style of events conducted by La as “having no distinction between public duties [as a police officer], and private affairs of being a landlord”. Gates continued,” [Such behavior] brings shame and dishonor to the RCMP”.

The Court was told how one couple were pressured to leave the Innisfail area after getting into disputes with La in 2005. Another couple was the couple pressured to do the mortgage assumption.

During the court proceedings, at one point, La’s wife went from her spot in the gallery to the area where the second couple were listening to the decision, and started to harass the witnesses. Court was immediately adjourned, and La’s wife was escorted out of the court house.

The mortgage frauds involved at least four properties, and “victims” included Alberta Treasury Branch, Bank of Montreal and CIBC as the banks. The CMHC was also listed as a victim. Most of the mortgage frauds related to fraudulent representations made of the living arrangements (saying it was going to be owner occupied, or in one case, occupied by a family member, when there was no such intention).

La was permitted to remain at large until sentencing, which is tentatively scheduled for June 6th, 2012.

Rainbow Investigations will provide further analysis of this conviction once sentencing is completed.

Here is the Innisfail Province link to the story, a more thorough version of the story: